Castle Ravenloft

My copy of the new Dungeons and Dragons Cooperative Board Game: Castle Ravenloft arrived today while I was home for lunch. I broke it open and check it out before heading back to work. Sturdy Box for the game and the box is taller than I expected.

Box has a nice storage insert with 5 compartments for cards, board tiles, and the figures. I bagged up the tokens into different groups.

The game is a dungeon exploring theme where new tiles are semi randomly revealed when a character end his turn on the edge of an existing tile. It is semi random since the different adventures have you place certain tiles into the stack at a specific point or range of tiles. The little arrows show you how to align the tiles so you do not walk into a wall. Tiles are similar in thickness to Space Hulk but are Matte and lack the embossing.

These are character cards for the Heroes and Major villains made of the same thick card stock as the board. For the heroes it gives your basic stats, special rules, and how many powers you have. The villain cards have

You get 5 decks of cards; Monster cards to generate the random monsters, Treasure to reward you, Adventure treasures that match with the different adventures, Encounter which show up if players are not exploring new tiles during a turn or on some of the tiles. The last deck is the character powers which tell you about your At-Will, Daily, and Utility powers. Each character has 10 powers of which he gets to pick 4-5. So in additional to random dungeon elements you get added replay value by trying with different powers.

Here are all the figures for the set. 5 Blue Heroes, 4 Grey Villains, 3 White Villains, and 10 sets of 3 monsters in red, clear blue, and white. These figures come no where close to what you get in GW sets like Isle of Blood or Space Hulk, but these are pieces to play the game not a game to play with the pieces. The come assembled bagged by color. I would say that you could open the game and get going in like 10 minutes with a few people punching the card stock while some one looks at the rules.

A sub group of the characters and villains.

Close up of the Hag figure. Detail is ok but many of the pieces have pretty soft parts so if you tried to paint them I think it might crack.

Dragonborn fighter. This is the new design in the box as the other are recycled from the D&D Mini line of prepainted collectible figures.

Looks like it is a fun game. It is supposed to be quick and work for 1-5 players. I will give the Solo introduction adventure a go tomorrow night.

Editorial: Making 40K Competitive

I think that trying to use GW rules for 40K to play a truly competitive game is like building your house out of dung. You can do it but you will always be wondering about that smell. Games Workshop says their games are not designed for competitive play and it is a hobby but then they sponsor events like Hard Boyz. Their statements about competitive play is more of an intentional cop out so they do not have to care about making it a fair competition between the armies.

The problem is of course the rules. You cannot play a game competitive unless everyone knows and understands the rules. Beyond just confusing and unclear wording in the rules, the whole structure of the rules is insufficiently organized. In a game driven by special rules you would expect definitions of categories so that rules can be quickly and clear defined. You can create a hierarchy of how to apply them to cut down on all the problems. In a properly formed system, no one would have to write a 100+ FAQ to try to cover any marginally reasonable question people could ask. Those people who put in a ton of work get bashed for it by haters on the blogosphere. The haters either think their answers are obvious, they give the wrong answer(so such answer must not be obvious), or they have a gone so far as to admit to changing the rules. It is not like GW does not change the rules in their FAQ, they just do not have the balls to admit that is what they are doing. Remember Errata and FAQ are different. In an Errata they can rewrite the rules but a FAQ is only supposed to clarify vague issues. I am all for changing some unclear or obvious against intention rules. I would probably support a lot more rules changes and think it could go a long way to making the game more competitive.


Of course GW does update the main rules on a consistant bases now. Looks like every 4 years going forward, but they do not do this to tweak the rules to make the game more balanced and rules more clear. It is purely a planned obsolence system to make money not to make the game better. While every army would love to get regular update some lanquish for so long that they really do not allow their use in the uber competitive ultra optimized list world. Watch out when your army does get updated. You might all the sudden have an illegal army with no HQs. (I am not kidding, my nids lost their warriors and Broodlord as HQ choices so I had no HQ in my 1000 points anymore). Or you find that they have made your current models overcosted with new units that are better in most ways and less costly in points so that they can sell their new plastic kits.


Currently you have the codexes that are just not good enough or have a single build which appears. People who want competitive gaming should be working on getting these list fixes as part of their event FAQ. I am sure all the out of play armies could be brought into line with some point adjustments and some subtle use of current USRs. The game would be a lot more competitive if you had to worry about facing 16 different codexes of armies on a level playing field. A competitive game should be about who is the best at the game not whose collection matches best with what GW has decided is going to be the best armies right now or who is willing to just throw money at GW for that current army. Finding that unit that GW has improperly priced and bringing as many as you can should not be where the competition should be. People always defend this unit spamming as building redundancy and real armies have multiple repeated units. This reminds me of an saying, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want."

Fixing the game as an event organizer is a ton of work and you would probably get flak from it from all circles but your ideas would be more useful than debating a single elimination or swiss format. Now if a real competitve movement starts, the work can be shared with a rules and balance committee made up of organizers of the events signing on for annual review cycle. You get 4-6 large events using the same rules/balance packet and you are probably in business.

I would think that if you really want to test your skills as a commander, the events should use prescribed lists. Some mirror battles would be interesting to see who can out move and out fight his opponents. It would probably been limited to the main armies like space marines or now IG since you would need to have the army people have selected to play. Or give them a realistic force to build their strike force out of with limits on the items in the forces armory. This takes a good part of the hobby of picking and building your force up out of the equation but might be interesting secondary events.

Now I am sure this editorial can be ripped apart. If it was published on BOLS it would be ridiculed in a rainbow of colors but the main point is: If you want to make it a competitive game you need to do the work to make the rules clear and the armies balanced, GW has made it clear that they have no interest in doing it for you.

Flame Away.

Impact! Miniatures: Dungeon Chest Set

In my recent Impact! Miniatures order, I got a Dungeon Chest set. This show the components of the kit. I have shown both sides of the bomb/ball piece but have only included in this picture 1 of the 6 chests with covers and 1 of the 6 treasure pieces. So you get enough components to build 6 treasure chests with either 6 bombs, 6 treasures, or replace up to 2 of these with spiked balls.


Here is the treasures. Yes, those do appear to be cold ones in a bed of ice. Thristy players in your fantasy football team might want something a little heavier than lizard aid.

Pretty nice detail on chest with lock.
Here is the top of the chest. Still look pretty good.

So these are the bombs and ball. Ball probably could look a little better but I like the grenade with popped trigger.

Back when these were announced I wonder how you would use them. Essentially you need a third party to load the chests since you will never be able to paint them identically enough not to be able to tell where the ball is. Small problem but still a nice little set.

Warhamster

I think everyone should check out the last two Dork Tower (1, 2) comics about the new Warhamster Fantasy Battles Rules. He pretty much got it just right.

Epic: Space Marine Thunderhawk

GW's Current Space Marine Thunderhawk.

All the components layed out. Flying base and components for 1 modern thunderhawk.

Hull section.

Bottom of Wings.

Control Surfaces, landing gear, and heavy bolters.

Hull and Wings resting together.

Last Chance for Poll

Today is your last chance to tell me who you think GW made their Isle of Blood Set for. You can check out my review if you are not sure about the nature of the box and what type of rule info you get.

Epic: Imperial Navy Thunderbolts

As part of my Epic series on what is in the box, I bring you GW's Imperial Navy Thunderbolts. Not to be confused with thunderhawks like GW did when packing my order to my FLGS. These minis are going to be added to my Heresy Era Force. When I finish building up my 40K era I will use the FW AI Thunderbolt models.

Pack comes with components for 4 fighters which yields 2 units. 4 Flying bases and 2 sets of 2 flying stands so you will have different heights on your fighters using this pack.

Close up of bodies and underwing rockets.

Top and Bottom view of wings. You can see the mounting holes for the rockets on the right bottom view.

Dark Sun 4e: Athasian Sorcerer Build

In my discussion of the classes for Dark Sun 4e, I stated that the Sorcerer class is a bit of a problem mainly from the fact that fluff text and neither of the builds are a good match for the setting. Here is a slightly modified class build that fits better with the magic source on Athas.

Athasian Sorcerer:

You have always been able to feel the vitality of the material around you but now you have learned to harness it and bend it to your will for spectacular affect.

Vitality Pull: Your feel for the lifeforce around you allows you to better harness it for arcane affects. You gain bonus to the damage of your arcane powers equal to your Wisdom modifier. This bonus increases by +2 at 11th level and +4 at 21st level.

Vitality Sense: Your feel for the lifeforce around you allows you to anticipate attacks. While not wearing heavy armor you can use your wisdom modifier in place of your Dexterity or Intelligence modifier to determine your AC.

Protect Vitality: You innate feel for vitality allows you to protect yours from attack. You gain resist 5 to Necrotic damage. The resistance increases 10 at 11th level and 15 at 21st level. This resistance works against damage caused by defiling magic.

Absorb Vitality: Sometimes you pull in to much lifeforce to drive for your arcane power. You have learned how to absorb this into yourself. While you cannot hold it forever it can add a boost to your vitality. When you roll a natural 20 for an arcane attack you immediately gain Wisdom modifier temporary hit points.

Find Hidden Vitality: Your natural sense allows you to find hidden sources of lifeforce to power your magic. The first encounter power you use in any encounter does not count against its use for the encounter(ie the first encounter power you use can be used again in the same encounter).

Design Notes: These are mainly based on the existing Sorcerer build features with the Find Hidden Vitality to compensate for the fact that I was not interested in writing powers for every level which give a bonus like you get with Dragon Magic and Wild Magic Class feature. The necrotic damage protection makes this class good for defilers working in groups or people hunting defilers if you use a more rational defiler/preserving rule.

Dark Sun 4e Review: Equipment and Coinage

Dark Sun Setting has always been one with little real wealth. Life is a struggle due to the harsh environment made all the worse by a lack of resources. The lack of metal was previous played out by either using a select number of weapons what did not require metal or using weapons whose metal components were replaced with various other materials. These other materials would affect not only the weapons ability to hit and the damage it could do (negative modifiers) but also had a chance of breaking with use. But since metal armor was also rare the armor classes of targets were also limited where the toughest commonly encountered armor was Hide.

In the new edition while metal is still rare, they have done away with the modifiers and the breakage while still there is total different. While in a certain way this makes sense, nonmetal armor does not protect as well so the nonmetal weapons perform as expected, they really do not have an advantages for using a metal weapon. Sure it might break a quarter as often in use but these are supposed to be great treasures. Probably metal weapons used on non metal armor should pick up an extra nonmagical enhancement bonus. Sort of makes them like lower level magic items.


The old rules used to have a piece mail armor system since a single steel breatplate could gave you better protection than most hide armors but that is also gone leaving only a rule about where a full suit of metal armor in the sun is going to be very hot. I think a full suit of hide armor would also have the same problem.


Dark Sun is also not supposed to be a world litter with magical items so the new rules have some options for this. First they have a fixed enhancement bonus system which improves characters attacks and defense as they go up in levels at a rate slightly slower than they would get with magic items. This allows the characters to still handle challenges of the proper level without everyone having to be loaded down with magic items like you are playing some MMO game. This is a great idea. To keep magic items lower they talk about removing and replacing treasure bundles. I have not taken a good look at the DMG so I cannot really comment on this.

Dark Sun is not really a place where you should be able to buy magic items. You might be able to sell them to some major players at the 20% value discussed in the players handbook buying them at any value should be very hard.


Item Value and Coinage has always been different on Dark Sun. Formerly anything not made of metal was considered 1/100 th the cost and copper pieces were replaced with ceramic pieces. So anything that used to cost 1 gp was now 1 ceramic piece and things that cost a silver piece cost a bit (1/10 th of a ceramic piece). This lead to some problems in that things also cost copper pieces and now you have no value small enough for that. This flat change also had some problems in that some things made of metal like the classic iron pot cost about 5 sp but had a material cost of the like 2 gp in metal. With laborers making less than a bit per day, a metal longsword at 15 gp represented a fortune.


In the revision they got rid of the funny down scaling of the currency but did not but a specific new value on metal objects. They say that city states produce ceramic coins of different values backed by their governments(like a 1 sp or 1 gp face value ceramic coin) and various trader with exchange these for other city states coinage at some discounted rate or exchange metal coins at full value to ceramic. This part is just not right. I like the idea of the different denominations of ceramic coins each back by the different city states. This gives a lot of flexibility and uncertainty in the value of things since Tyr currency is probably not valued very high currently in other city states. But saying that all the City States keep there currency on a gold standard does not make sense in this world. If a character starts out with 150 gp worth of equipment than that is the equivalent of 3 pounds of gold if anyone would actually do that exchange for you, but no one will so gold must really be worth a lot more. Using the Classic Scaling you get that gold is worth 5000 ceramic gold pieces per pound, 500 for silver, 50 for copper, and 100 for iron. Metal object probably cost about their weight times 2 for simple objects and 4+ for complicated things. It will be up to the GM to decide and find ways to keep even higher level characters from amassing to much wealth.

Dark Sun 4e Review: Defiling and Preserving

One of the classic changes in Dark Sun was where the power for arcane magic comes from. In many normal fantasy settings wizards seem to tap an unknown but unlimited supply of energy to wield their spells. This is not the case in Dark Sun. All arcane magical power is derived from life force. Initially wizards extract it from plants and microbes but as they grow in power they can start extracting it from people. Defilers do this power extraction in a fast and dirty way destroying the life as they do it while Preserves take a more measured approach of drawing from larger areas more slowly to get the power they need.

The use of considerable defiler magic in the past has left the world a wasted land so the populace is not happy with wizards in general. In the original version of Dark Sun Defilers and Preserves were separate classes with a faster advancement rate for defilers to represent their easier path to power. When a defiler cast any spell near by plants would be destroyed out to a distance depending on plant density and spell level. Creatures caught in the range would feel pain and have their actions delayed segments as they fought through the affect but no long lasting affects until you dealt with defilers on the level of the Sorcerer Kings who would actually do hit point damage to creatures as well.

In the new version defiling is a choice a wizard can make we he needs a little extra power for a spell, this is not a bad idea as the fluff had various characters doing both for this type a reason. This is accomplished by a arcane class feature that works with Arcane Daily Attack Powers. When using a daily arcane power, you can choose to defile and get a reroll as a free action if you do not like the first roll. This can be for either the attack or damage roll. This defilement not just kills plant life but does damage equal I think 1/2 their healing surge to all your allies within 20 squares. This is sort of a problem. They claim it is because these people share a link with the defiler but I just do not like it at all. I think if it is going to do damage it should be to all corpereal entities within the distance at a lower amount like the half the level of the daily attack power.

Defilers can then pick up some feats that allow you to extend this affect to other things. While that seems interesting having to spend a feat to take the easy path does not really make sense.
One allows you to defile with at will or daily powers that you activated with an action point.

The single worse thing associated with the defiling power is the psionic defiling feat which allows you to defile to reroll psionic daily attacks. This is just wrong and makes no sense within the world structure. This could be a class feature for the Dragon Epic Destiny as they used to be powerful defilers and psionicists but not a general paragon level feat.

While the mechanics are interesting since I bet missing with a Daily Attack Power stinks, I really do not like the final form.